When I was face to face talking with the seller, he told me that he lived about 45 minutes away now so I he only comes back to cut the grass.

First i would think about what it will take cost and labor to strip/patch/sand,stain and finish the floors stripper and sanding pads will add up unless its an exotic wood, I personaly would simply lay new hardwood or laminate flooring down you can find all styles sizes colors types of wood and most are prefinished and are extremly easy to instiall, some are glueless and nailess.

I know for a fact when i first joined biggerpockets I was like a chicken with it's head cut off and had no direction.

Simply getting the mortgage payment to a level that will allow cash flow is not the objective.

Tighter credit and higher borrowing costs threaten the housing market, which has been an engine of U.S. economic growth.Second Homes``It is unfair for a family to have to pay a tax on their income that they simply do not receive,'' Representative Kathy Castor, a Florida Democrat, said today.

Cut your losses and run.

If, OTOH, you use a commercialized site that is just "reselling" and repackaging a report from the big three, they take a cut....usually about $10 or more per individual.

If I were going to use this method, I would simply knock on the door and ask them if their house is for sale and how much they want?

WH.....this is good, but again i am thinking on a couple things here, only wanting to make things flow as simply as possible with little to no gliches at the end of the transaction....i'll try to explain what i mean and maybe i'm speaking for many out there that are making some attempt to find success in this endeavor....in regard only to a short sale transaction the following occurs:property owner (let's call this person the "seller") allows for an individual (let's call this person the "buyer") to "purchase" the property merely for the sake of the "buyer" moving forward to deal with the loss mit people at the lender.as time moves along, this "buyer" gets written confirmation of the lender accepting the "price" offered via the customery HUD-1.now let's say for illustration purposes the "approved" price the lender has agreed to is $250000, the value of the property seems to be in the neighborhood of $350000 and the "buyer" wants to "double escrow" this bad boy for $300000 (generating a clean $50K profit)......in this illustration/scenario the question remains: "what is the cleanest, simplist" way to accomplish this?

I said ok, send me your counter offer.My question(s) is:How should I have structured my offer to AVOID a counter offer and how should I respond to the seller's counter offer if it cuts into myprojected profit?